


Club Fight

by brotherfuckers



Series: Striderclan [116]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Clubbing, Date Rape Drug/Roofies, Fluff, Gen, Guardian Striders, Protective Striders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-04 21:32:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3090950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brotherfuckers/pseuds/brotherfuckers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bro’s having a great gig at a club, but on his break he catches something fishy going on which reminds him of previous events that have gone down, ruining his night until he can get back to the apartment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Club Fight

**Author's Note:**

> Related to Trickster.
> 
> Warnings: Attempted Date Rape (not by the Striders or to the Striders)

Music flows from the speakers into the crowd drenched with sweat built up from continuous moving and swaying as they dance under the spell of the beat. Bodies writhe and tangle, separate and mingle. The strobe lights skitter across the room, highlighting smiles and eyes only for a second before moving on. The fog machine rolls out, giving the illusion of privacy and anonymity. Bright colors and tight black clothing do little to really hide all of the skin that brushes up against others. The need for human contact drives the crowd to dance too close to each other on the dance floor, drawing others in to feed the movement and music.

The club is hopping tonight. Bro can barely keep his poker face in place as he plays his music to the jumping crowd. The large grin keeps threatening to break through. With how busy the bar is, his share of the tips should be a small fortune. The crowd is especially pliant tonight and he’s sure that more than a handful of the dancers aren’t going back to their own homes tonight. He’s even sure that some of them aren’t even waiting for home before getting it on. He puts on a couple of his favorite sexed up songs just for them.

He enjoys it when the crowd gets into having a fun time. Everyone is bouncing and having a blast. He can’t take full credit as this was a normally popular venue with very good layout and design and the bartenders are some of the best mixers in the city. And speaking of drinks, Bro finds himself a little thirsty.

But his usual assistant seems to have been pulled in to help out with the bars so he flips on some of his auto plays and heads down from the booth to the closest bar. It’s a close call actually making it there with how many people were grinding up against him and damn that girl with the nice hips and cute top made a very good case to go home with her instead of whatever else he had planned. He’ll get her number on his way back unless someone else snags her to show her a good time.

He eventually makes it to the bar and only has to wait a couple of moments before a spot opens up for him to lean again. He signals for a water and slips some cash out. His drinks are normally free but he’s not going to try to argue that over the sounds of the club with the harried bartenders who are still doing a fantastic job getting everyone settled as fast as possible.

He smiles pleasantly as the girl who slides in next to him, hair a bit loose from the fast movements out on the dancefloor. She glances at him and then looks again, this time with obvious appraisal. Bro hopes that she likes what she sees.(right?)

“You’re the DJ, aren’t you?” she asks loudly over the music even though Bro can barely hear her.

“Yours truly,” he says with a smirk.

“What?”

“Yes!”

“Cool! Nice music!”

“Thanks!”

“Getting lonely up in the booth?”

Oh that’s tempting. But he’s not getting paid to bang hotties. “Management’s rules say no. But what about an after party?”

She smiles and is about to answer when there is a small surge in the crowd that presses against his back, crushing him against the bar with a groan.

“Oi!” he shouts at the offender when he gets enough space to turn around towards the pressing people.

“Sorry, man,” the dude says to him but doesn’t stop from pressing his way up to the bar anyways between Bro and his newfound friends. The extra body makes everyone already there move over even though there was hardly any room to start with. Bro glares at the back of the dude’s head but he’s already interested in waving down the bartender impatiently. He asks for a drink and then demands that she gets whatever the woman next to him is drinking.

Bro rolls his eyes at the gesture, especially as he hasn’t even introduced himself or gotten any sign of interest from her, but it’s his money to do as he pleases. His water still hasn’t shown up yet anyways.

All three drinks show up at the same time. Bro’s about to just take his and head back to the bouncy girl on the dance floor when he catches an odd movement from the dude’s hand as he reaches for the other two drinks.

“Oi!” he barks again as he grabs the dude’s wrist as it shifts from being over the girly drink to grabbing the stem. “What the hell did ya just put into her drink?”

“What the hell are you talking about, man?”

“I know ya did somethin’ to her drink,” he growls out.

“I didn’t do nothing!” Bro squeezes harder down on his wrist. “Ow! Ow! Ow! Fuck!” A small vial skitters onto bar without a cap but a couple drops of something liquidy clinging to the inner surface. There is a soft sound of exclamation from the crowd around them as they had drawn attention with the dude’s cries of pain.

“I’ll ask ya one more time, what did ya put into her drink?” Bro says close enough to his face with his expression flat but eyes flashing hot.

“Just something to help me out! Fuck! It’s not like it would make her pass out or anything! A fucking aphrodisiac! To get her in the mood!”

Bro’s mind flashes back to D’s reaction to such a drug and he squeezes down on the captured wrist hard enough to make him fall to his knees screaming. Behind him the woman is staring in horror at the drink until the bartender whisks it away to dump immediately into the sink.

“Where didja get it?”

“LET GO OF ME, FUCKER! LET GO!”

Bro lets up enough just to get him to stop being so fucking loud. It doesn’t stop the crowd from being immensely interested. Bro has a feeling that the bouncers are already on their way over to break it up.

“Where did you get it?”

“I bought it off of some guy yesterday at the club a block away! Jesus fuck! It wasn’t like I was going to rape her! It was just to help me out!”

“If that’s the ‘help’ you need, you don’t deserve to touch another woman. I should take your fucking hand off but it’s your lucky day, _man_ , you get to deal with the bouncers instead of me.” He lets go of the man’s wrist just as the first of the bouncers push through the crowd. The big guy looks surprised to see Bro involved with this. Bro just gestures down at the dude cradling his wrist. “Asswipe tried drug her.” The bouncer looks over to the bartender who nods, supporting Bro’s story. It also helps when Bro passes the vial to the bouncer. “Call the cops and get them to fucking stop this.”

The bouncer nods to Bro and hauls the dude to his feet just as a second bouncer arrives. They drag him away as he kicks and screams about how Bro assaulted him and framed him and he should be tossed too and he wasn’t drugging anyone, not date raping anyone, he wouldn’t do that kind of thing. It was just supposed to get her a little wet.

Bro feels a bit of bile come up at that. He knows how it reacts with someone. Or at least how it could react. Maybe the dude was telling the truth and D just had a bad case, a bad reaction, but Bro isn’t about to let that happen around him anytime soon.

He just wishes he could get to the fucking root of the problem and stop it for good. He squeezes his water bottle out of frustration. Maybe after the cops got done with this one, they’d let Bro have him to beat a lesson into his ass and let off some steam.

“Thanks for that,” the woman calls out to him, breaking him out of his vengeance fantasies.

“Of course. I can’t believe that fucker. My brother’s been hit by that drug. I’m glad ya didn’t get hurt. Or worse.”

She nods. “I’ve had a friend in a similar situation. Here,” she reaches over to the bar and grabs a pen that someone had just put down after signing a receipt. She then grabs Bro’s hand and writes her number on it along with ‘Courtney’ which he assumes is her name. “For that after party you mentioned. And for thanks.”

He smiles and bows his head in acknowledgement. He knows that he’ll still be too wired for that kind of after party tonight but he’ll text her anyways on his way home. “Yeah, but gotta get back to the music makin’ now.”

“Of course.” She leans in for a quick kiss before letting him get through the crowd and back up to the DJ booth. He does his best to keep his mood from affecting the music but there is a subtle shift that tones down the excitement that he had going on before the break. Now he wonders if all of the nearly copulating couples had been chemically influenced or not. He keeps scanning the crowds for any other possible signs of drugging or craziness like D went through. He doesn’t see anything. The example that he caught and stopped might have been the only one here at this club since the dude had bought the stuff another night at a different club, but it still doesn’t ease Bro’s paranoia. Or feeling of distress about what all went down at that other club.

He finishes playing the set the best he can, no longer fighting the grin but fighting a scowl from covering his face. He’s right on cue for winding everyone down and suggesting that they head out close to last call. There’s one last surge for the bar which spikes Bro’s worry again before the crowd starts to disperse to wherever they’ll end up in the mornings.

Bro doesn’t see Courtney as he closes out and starts packing up all of his equipment. He texts her a quick note about hoping she got home safe and they’ll plan their own private party later if she’s still interested. But his nerves about the whole scenario haven’t diminished by the time he has everything out to his car and his wad of tips in his pocket.

The entire trip home he’s fidgety and twitchy. He bounces his fingertips against the steering wheel and runs his hand through his hair over and over. He hates every red light as if they were a personal insult. It feels like forever before he gets home. Then he just leaves his stuff in the car and bounds up the stairs. He needs something else more than his stuff. Plus, they haven’t had any issues before.

The apartment is dark when he cracks open the door and slips inside. He pulls off his shirt and tosses it aside. His keys, wallet, and everything else in his pocket goes to the kitchen table as quietly as he can make it. He shucks his pants and tosses them in the same blind direction as his shirt.

He shuffles over to the futon, letting it hit his shins before groping fro where the current inhabitant is. Seems like only one of them which is nice for once. He climbs in under the blanket, trying not to crush anything of D’s as he goes. D shifts a little at the incoming body but doesn’t wake up fully. Bro just tucks himself against his chest.

It’s comforting as D always has been. They’ve always been close as brothers, as best friends. Raising the brats together has put another layer on top of things and then the sex happened and brought them closer from another direction. Bro knows that that will probably stop after the boys move out because they have always been brothers first instead of lovers. Which is perfectly fine for Bro.

But even for all of the familiarity and knowledge that D is safe and that particular vial of drug wasn’t going to hurt anyone, Bro finds himself still unable to sleep. He’s about to turn away and do something else to burn off the nervous energy when one of D’s exceptionally long arms wraps itself around his shoulders.

“What happened, Bro?” His voice is quiet and rumbly from sleep. Bro feels a tiny bit bad about waking him up.

“Nothin’, D. Go to sleep.”

“It wasn’t nothing. What happened?”

Bro lets out a long sigh. Of course D wouldn’t just let him get away with that. “Remember that bad trip ya took with the aphrodisiac drug?” D nods. “I think I caught someone else tryin’ to use it on a girl. On a girl I was hittin’ on, the asshole.”

“Is she okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, Courtney’s fine. I caught him before he could pass her the drink. I hope I sprained his wrist or something.”

“You did good, Bro,” D says as he pets Bro’s hair comfortingly.

“The guy got it though from ‘nother club. He got it from a dealer. Which means there’s more of it. And I was so busy just feedin’ the crowd the music that I wasn’t payin’ attention to if any of the girls were actin’ weird. If anyone was actin’ weird. It was sheer luck that I caught this douche bag. What if I had walked away a second earlier or hadn’t seen him dump it. What if-”

“Bro. It’s not your responsibility.”

“But I know ‘bout it!”

“Still not your responsibility. You can’t save the world, Bro. You can only save a little part of it. You saved what’s her name-”

“Courtney.”

“Courtney and that’s enough for tonight. You did good, Bro. Did the bouncers take the asshole?”

“Yeah.” He’s trying to calm down and believe D but it’s hard.

“Then they probably got the police involved and they are probably doing a lot towards this problem.”

“They better.”

“They will. Now go the fuck to sleep, Bro.” His eyes flutter close.

“Easier said than done, D.”

“Do you need me to fuck you to sleep?” He opens one eye down at Bro.

“Nah,” he laughs. “Nah, but maybe I should-”

“Nope. No sorting smuppets or ordering more felt.” He pulls on Bro tighter. He kisses Bro’s forehead. “Just close your fucking eyes and relax a little.”

Bro takes a pouting deep breath but listens to his older brother. D actually feels when Bro gives it up to sleep. He smiles a little and follows him shortly.

 

**Author's Note:**

> For more information please check out our work at striderclan.tumblr.com; we have more stories, head canons, art/pictures.


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